In recent weeks two events created embarrassment for the Mia Mottley led government. First it was the still born Little Island Big Barbados BTMI matter followed by the snub after she demanded the smutty Trojan Riddim video be removed from the YouTube streaming service.
Three years after achieving an unprecedented victory in the 2018 general election and riding the crest of high popularity, several blunders and unwieldy execution of projects have been the bane of the BLP administration in recent months. Notwithstanding severe economic challenges, a raging COVID 19 pandemic and a brief encounter with ash fall, the general public has become increasingly impatient with a government that has over promised and yet to deliver on several promises: Freedom of Information legislation, enhanced governance to effectively treat with perennial concerns of the Auditor General and related matters, timely delivery of justice from the courts, NIS fix, reform education, arrest crime, rooting out corruption in public life by holding transgressors accountable to name a few.
One suspects despite the blunders the government still has its head at the front of the 2023 political race given the unpreparedness of the main opposition party. That said a week is a long time in politics. However, the black eye the Mia Mottley government has received as a result of the clawback on the ‘Little Island Big Barbados’ issue, capped by the snub delivered by the Trojan Riddim artistes must be worrying. Why pull the plug on the Brand driver initiative after it was paid for? How will a committee of locals determine a brand driver for the visitor? Why demand local artistes remove the video from Youtube if Mottley more than most should have been acutely aware of the uncompromising loyalty enjoyed by said artistes with the underground audience?
More worrying for the blogmaster is the confirmation of a crisis of public morality in the country. Public morality is considered to be the moral and ethical standards a people try to maintain in the society; embodied in our laws, how the police force enforces the law and the peer to peer influence by citizens. The cohesion required for a well ordered society is the ability for all segments, Alpha, Millennials, Baby Boomers et al to ensure mutual concerns overlap on the ‘ven diagram’. What we have in Barbados are disparate groups unable to create a path to defining acceptable social values
Note to Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the country needs leadership.
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